Barry Halper, the New Jersey businessman and limited partner in the Yankees who amassed what has been acclaimed as the most extensive and valuable collection of baseball memorabilia, died yesterday from complications of diabetes. He was 66.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/story/375990p-319503c.html

In all, the Halper collection, which was ultimately sold at auction by Sotheby's in 1999, contained over 100,000 pieces ranging from the truly historic (Babe Ruth's famous camel hair coat, Shoeless Joe Jackson's "black Betsey" bat, the papers of correspondence between Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert and Red Sox owner Harry Frazee on the sale of Ruth in 1919), to the truly bizarre (the rifle Ty Cobb's mother used to shoot his father, Cy Young's dentures, and a weather vane that had rested on the roof of a Waterbury, Conn., factory that had once been the home of 19th century Hall of Famer Roger Connor).

At his press conference in Dallas in 1994 announcing his successful liver transplant, Mantle spotted Halper in the audience and cracked: "Hey, Barry, did you get my other liver?"